Forest lands: More than just trees

Global rates of deforestation and forest degradation
continue at persistently high levels, although annual net
rates of forest loss have slowed to approximately 8 Mha
as the extent of planted forests increases. Drivers of
deforestation vary geographically. Conversion to both
large- and small-scale agriculture remains dominant, and
conversion to plantations, mining and infrastructure
development is important in some regions. Forests,
however, continue to be important to the livelihoods of
millions of people, poor and rich, men and women, rural
and urban. They provide a broad range of products that
often escape the attention of decision makers, and an even
broader range of services that are both poorly understood and commonly
ignored. The direct contribution of forests to livelihoods varies widely with
region, community, gender, ethnicity and management system. Research
done by CIFOR with 50 research partners in over 8000 households living
in and around forests in 25 developing countries shows that forest-derived
income constitutes about 20% of their total household income, while
income from the environment more generally — both forest and nonforest
— makes up more than 25%. Globally, the most important part of
that income comes from the sale of fuelwood, with timber sales second.
The direct contribution of forests to diets is also considerable and often
crucial, but largely hidden from urban and official eyes. Forest foods add
not only calories but also necessary protein and micronutrients to the
diets of rural people. The importance of forests’ direct contribution to
diets and incomes may be eclipsed by their inputs to human well-being
outside forests. Focusing on food, much more needs to be understood
about the environmental services that forests provide to various types of
agriculture, including the regulation of water flow and quality, mitigation of
climatic extremes, provision of pollination services and germplasm for crop
improvement, maintenance of nutrient cycling and soil fertility, control of
agricultural pests and diseases, and other essential functions. These services
are critical to the maintenance of most agricultural systems, including the
most modern agribusinesses, but are seldom valued until they are lost.
Knowledge of how forests can be managed to simultaneously optimise
production of foods and environmental services is also little understood and
thus little valued. Without proper attention to these issues, the importance
of forests to human well-being will continue to be undervalued, ignored,
and diminished, increasingly irreparably.